In one sense,
wine might be considered a casualty of the decline of the Roman
Empire. If a multitude of wines are known in the Late Medieval era,
for centuries after the Franks took over, it is rare to see any
mention of a regional wine and the idea of vintages – known to
Roman connoisseurs – disappeared until after the Middle Ages. As
with so many other subjects, the history of French wine tends to skip
from the Romans to just before the Crusades. Yet substantial evidence
exists to show that wine production itself not only continued but
probably expanded under the Franks, laying the ground for what would
become a rich and flourishing wine trade.

Wine before the Franks

Wine itself came
early to both the Gauls and the Germans – that is, to the two
groups whose cultures would meld with the Romans' to create France.
The Gauls knew it at least from the Greeks at what would become
Marseilles; Etruscan amphorae found in France suggest they may
already have encountered it from Italy as well. The German exposure
too began with the Greeks; Greek
amphorae have been found in early Iron Age graves. It
is noteworthy that these graves also held
various wine-drinking paraphernalia:

These
vessels were all part of the accoutrements of the wine-drinking
ritual in Greek and Etruscan societies.. This wine-drinking ritual
played a special role in status display and social competition in
those Mediterranean societies. (Wells)

With Roman rule,
the Gauls – now Gallo-Romans – became producers and exporters of
wine. The wine of Bordeaux, especially, is noted by authors as
different as Pliny the Elder (23 - 79), who praised the wines of
Biturica, and Ausonius, whose name is now that of a famous wine
variety. Though Ausonius (c. 310- c. 394) was from Bordeaux, which he
described as “my country made famous by Bacchus”, he also wrote a
famous poem on the Moselle Valley, describing “caverns
covered with vines forming a natural amphitheatre” and comparing
the effect there to how “vines color my Garonne river”.

Paulin de Pella (376 - c. 459) managed his wife's vines in Aquitaine. Later he took
refuge in Marseille and talked (with some exaggeration) of the vines
as the only source of the city's wealth.

Sometime in this
period, too, wines began to be mentioned in Burgundy. Burgundy
wine had
existed
since at least the third century, when Eumene complained about the
effect of taxes on the vines of Autun; there is some evidence tracing
it back to the first century (Bazin)Both
Chalons
(sur-Saone) and Autun have been credited with originating it.
(Lantier).
Dion
says that this region's wines became established between the first
and third century.

Otherwise,
various indications of Gallo-Roman wine production have been found in
the Loir-et-Cher, the Maine-et-Loire, the Haute-Loire and the Loire.
Amphora production in the valleys of the Seine, of the Oise and of
the Rhine suggests wine production all through the second century.
Laubenheimer cites various sources from the end of Imperial period as
mentioning wine production in the regions of Bordeaux, Poitou,
Saintonge, the Lyonnais, Moselle, the Cote-d'Or, the Paris basin, the
Limagne, the Narbonnais and the Gard, Aquitaine and Marseille.

Wines
of Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Loire, and even those farther north,
are noted then under the Gallo-Romans. However, as the empire
declined, southern wine production decreased, in the Narbonnaise,
Provence and Languedoc regions; in Aquitaine, some larger domains
persisted in the fourth century. This
is noteworthy because, as important as Bordeaux wine, in particular,
was before and after the Early Medieval period, far less evidence
exists of it in the period itself.

The
other big change to note in the Late Empire was the shift from
amphorae to barrels. Barrels themselves may have come from Italy, but
via the Gauls who lived there for a time; it has also been suggested
that the Gauls themselves got the idea from the Etruscans (Marlière).
Barrels are already shown on Trajan's column (113); by one account
they became more common when Roman soldiers needed a way to transport
volumes of wine north from Lyons to the Rhine. Whatever the case,
barrels were already being used before the Franks ruled France,
though for a long time they coexisted with amphorae.

Roman
holdovers

Scattered
evidence exists that under the Franks some Roman-style connoisseur-ship persisted at least for a time. The Museum of Cluny, for instance,
holds
a sixth
century liturgical wine
strainer,
implying a Roman sense of refinement in consumption (as suited the
largely Gallo-Roman Medieval church). If
such implements fell away under the Franks, it may be not only
because they drank wine with less ceremony, but because the spices
and other ingredients added to wine became less common and so there
was simply nothing to strain out. It is also true that such
paraphernalia may have come to seem like a decadent indulgence in
the Christian era.

The
Romans knew of a wide range of wines by name, both Italian and
foreign; notably Falernian and Caecuban, but also including wines
from Setia and Opimius. The wines of Gaza (in Palestine) and Chio (in
Greece) were also highly prized. Apollinaris (c. 430 - c 486) (who continued to live a Roman life under German rule) writes a friend not to expect wines of Gaza, Chio, Mt. Falernus or Sarepta. Under the Franks, a number of these
wines would maintain their reputation. Gregory, for instance, mentions the wine of Gaza as one of the excellent wines
a host orders brought out for a guest.

Fortunatus mentions
mixing “Falernian” with honey. The Romans had a separate term –
mulsum – for wine mixed with honey and it seems unlikely
that true Falernian would have been adulterated in this way, nor that
it would have required it (since honey typically would have countered
a more bitter taste). It may be that the term took on a general
meaning over time similar to “Champagne” today, which has been
used to refer to sparkling wines from other regions or even other
countries.

Gregory too
uses “Falernian” as a synonym for the very
best wine. One of the miracles Gregory credits to St. Martin
is turning water into Falernian wine (not just any wine, mind you).
In fact, in mentioning Christ turning water into wine, he says that
he turned it, specifically, into Falernian. Clearly,
this would not have been the Italian regional wine (if anything, it
would logically have been more like a wine of Gaza). In
praising the vines near Dijon, Gregory says they “gave the
inhabitants so fine a Falernian that they despise the wine of
Chalon”. (The wines of Chalon –Chalon-sur-Saône
– had had a reputation since Roman times; some scholars however read Gregory's text as referring to
Ascalon, another city in Palestine known for its wine). From
these references, it is very unlikely that Gregory still used the
term in its literal sense.

Note that both Dijon and, if
that is the reference, Chalon-sur-Saône,
are
in Burgundy. This
region's wine production continued and even appears to have
flourished under the Franks.

Gregory's
praise of specific wines is rare in the period. For most of
the later centuries under the Franks, wine is mentioned generically,
without distinction of age, origin or color. References to the old
Roman favorites – Falernian, Gaza, etc. – mainly disappear,
though in describing Jumiéges
(Upper Normandy) an eighth-century life of St. Philibert says “here
vineyards abound with bunches of grapes whose shining, swelling buds
gleam with Falernian.” (hinc vinearum abundant butriones, qui
turgentibus gemmis, lucentibus rutilant in falernis.) The same
passage shows that valued vines were then grown in Normandy.

Medieval
wine

The
modern consensus is that Medieval wine was weak
and
short-lived:
“Almost
all medieval wine was drunk in the year of its vintaging....We attach
importance to the quality of age. Medieval man did not. He was little
interested in age and he made no real effort to improve his wines by
aging them.” (Mole);
“Wine
…. could not be stored long. Six months old was probably the peak
of a medieval wine's quality.
It was unusual for wine to keep as long as four years; most of it was
gone within a year, either soured to vinegar or consumed at table.”(Johnston);
“medieval
winewas
not as strong as wines are today. ... people consumed wine
immediately after production, directly out of wooden casks, ...
resulting in a weakerconcoction
“(Vess);
“Medieval wine kept badly and had to be consumed within the year – which did not fail to impose a seasonal rhythm on trade, without
changing the prices,
the buying and selling methods" (Duby).

This
decline in strength and quality, and
the disappearance
of the idea of a “vintage”,
can be attributed to various causes, not least the loss of much Roman
husbandry. Certainly, the change from amphorae to barrels played a
part (glass
bottles were not used for wine until well after the Medieval period).
It would be a long time before barrels would be sealed sufficiently
to avoid evaporation. As late as the eighteenth century, Le Grand
d'Aussy wrote:

It
is to be hoped that some sealant will be found and kept which,
without communicating any foreign taste to the liquor, nonetheless
prevents its evaporation somewhat, so that one can, without loss, let
it acquire in the cask that perfection and that maturity which Time
alone can give it, and that it can no longer receive once it is bottled.

The
fact, however, that wine did not keep did not mean it could not be
transported and traded. It remained a key item of trade (which itself
did not decline as drastically as some more extreme images of the
“Dark Ages” would have it). Gregory of Tours writes of a merchant
going to pick up wine at Orleans. “At
this time, a merchant name Christophore left for Orleans, because he
had heard that a great deal of wine had arrived there: he went there
then, bought the wine and had it transported by boat.”
Jourdan-Lombard
writes: “The
fairs of the early Middle Age were in part wine fairs." Devroey
has carefully analyzed the transportation in the ninth century of
wine by the St. Germain Abbey to various regions and ports.

It
may be then that some general reputations existed for the wine of
certain regions. But, for a long time, such reputations were not
sufficient to be recorded in surviving documents. Towards the end of
the Frankish period, several specific wines are mentioned, showing
that such distinctions then existed; but most cannot be readily identified
today.

Trade
in turn impacted cultivation, which was often along or near
waterways. Duby, reviewing Dion's classic work on French wine
history, writes:

This book shows in a stunning manner the
domination which water routes exercised on the history of old
vineyards: these were born and grew up along banks, and in absolute
dependance on the capacity of boats. .... Yves Renouard has shown
that the superiority of transport by boat lay in, as much as by the
greater ease (compensated no doubt by the lesser ease of avoiding
tolls), the need to spare barrels the shocks which would have
displaced them.

How
big a part did the Church play in preserving or reviving wine production? Mole:

Another theory holds that it was the
Church which brought the tradition of viticulture over from Roman
times, and safeguarding it during the years of invasion and anarchy,
and deploying it once again in the fullness of the Middle Ages. This
theory is patently untrue. The Church had little, if anything, to do
with the transmission of viticulture from the Ancient into the
Christian world. Wine-growing was brought over the Dark Ages by
private enterprise, and the traditions of viticulture were continued
through the memories of lay vignerons rather than through the
manuscripts of monastic libraries.

He
adds further on:

The Christian vineyards were not solely –
and not even principally – intended to provide wine for the Mass.
Their main function was not religious but economic. They were
donated, or created, in order to contribute to the upkeep of a
foundation... [The Church's] attitude towards agricultural profit was
on the whole severely practical and its view of agricultural trade
was seldom distorted by sentiment.

No
doubt opposing views have appeared since 1966, when this was
published. But Mole's is at least worth considering as a corrective
to what is still a common view.

Narrative
references

Historical
or anecdotal references to French wine in this period are scattered,
but useful, especially early in the period of Frankish rule

In
the VIth c. the sources remained
abundant: the will of Saint Remy includes several donations of
vineyards in Champagne, Venantius Fortunatus sings the praises of
the vineyard of the Moselle,
of the Bordeaux region and of the Val du Loire and Gregory
of Tours mentions
those of Burgundy, of the valley of the
Loire, but also of the vines in Alsace whose vineyards appear for the
first time in texts.

(Laubenheimer)

Gregory (539 - 594) tells twice how the Bretons had all the grapes of Nantes and Rennes
harvested and carried off. Presumably these grapes were of some
quality to be worth stealing. Though
the Nantes region (in
the Loire) still produces a number of wines today,
neither
Rennes nor Brittany in
general are now known
for wine; yet
wine was still made in Brittany in later centuries.

In
one famous story, Chilperic established a tax of one “amphora” of
wine per arpent (a measure of land); the
exact size of this vessel (probably a barrel) has been variously estimated, but whatever
the case, the
tax was considered onerous, especially by the people of Limousin, who
burned the tax registers and almost killed the tax collector. (Wine
is still produced in Limousin today, though the region is not known
for it.)

Gregory
also mentions a
winemaker on the Ile-de-Ré,
an island on the Atlantic coast which still makes wine today and is
part of the Poitou-Charentes region.

Arguably,
Gregory
also is the first to mention wine in Alsace. He tells how the woman
in an adulterous couple was sent to Marlenheim (in Alsace) and her
lover sent “to work the vine”. The
location of the vineyard is not specified (we cannot assume the man
and woman were sent to the same place) but it
was likely to have been in the same general region, even if it was
not Marlenheim itself.

Fortunatus (c. 530 - 609) refers to the “rich vineyards” along the Moselle: “"Every
way one turns, the hills are covered with vines... these vines are
planted in regular, close rows, and the painted posts which indicate
their divisions climb all the way to the top of the mountain."
He describes wine near Trier, with a taste as sweet as honey, growing
on mountainsides and gathered by men hanging off the rocks. He
also makes it plain, however,
that wine was
not always to be found when he
was traveling; wine production and distribution in France appears to have been spotty in the sixth century.

Vineyards in records

Perhaps the richest source on
vineyards for the Early Medieval period tells us almost nothing of
their reputation or quality, but does at least document the
persistence of viticulture in various regions; this is the collection
of donations, wills and founding documents which have (unevenly)
survived.

This body of documentation is
problematic in a number of regards. First of all, it is certainly not
complete. Everything from Viking raids to Revolutionary vandalism,
not to mention simple decay, has destroyed some of what once existed.
Where documents do survive, the Latin place names they use cannot
always be identified, either because no corresponding locale has been
found or because more than one credible equivalent exists. It is also
true that a number of these are forgeries. Ironically, however, this
verifies more certainly that the properties they reference existed,
since the very purpose of creating such “back-dated” documents
was to establish a particular institution's right to the property in
question. Since most of these forgeries themselves were created in
the Early Medieval period, they prove that vineyards existed in the places named, if
not necessarily as early as the supposed date of the document.

One question to consider too
is how much the presence of vineyards implied wine production as
opposed to fruit consumption. In fact, in this period in particular,
it seems very likely that any place that had a vineyard was also
producing wine. As Ruas points out, evidence of grape consumption
from the Early Medieval period is rare:

In
spite of the greater preservation chances (high frequency in the
relatively numerous refuse dumps), pips of Vitis vinifera have only
been found in less than half the sites. However, in sites from the
Late Middle Ages, Vitis is found more frequently...The urban latrines
of Montauban, Troyes, and Paris indicate that grapes were consumed as
table fruit, either fresh or dry.... Archeological records of Vitis
are not scarce, but the extension of viticulture towards the north is
better documented by historical sources.

Finally it is important to
know that in the nineteenth century most native French grape stock
was wiped out by phylloxera; if many regions have persisted from
these centuries, little of the original grape stock has survived today.
(Could scientists clone older varieties from the various grape seeds
which have been found by archaeologists? No one seems to have
suggested the idea so far.)

It is also true that a full
analysis of these documents would require a major project; any
reference to them here is based on a cursory and incomplete review.
Still, certain tendencies do appear in this exercise.

One striking aspect of these
documents is the continued appearance of most of the major wine
regions known under the Romans, most of which (not all) are still
known today: Burgundy, the Loire, the Moselle, but also the Parisian
region and northern areas like Picardy and the Nord (north)
department. Alsace, whose wines appear to have been unknown under the
Romans (despite the success of the neighboring Moselle region),
appears more than once in these records. Equally striking is the
rarity, though not complete absence, of southern regions, notably
Bordeaux.

Some
such references can be matched to modern wines. In 587, King Gontran
of Burgundy gave vines to monks at Saint-Benigne near Dijon; wine is still produced there today. In 640
the duke of Amagaire gave vines to the abbey of Bezes, at Gevrey
(today part of the Cote de Nuits along the Route des Grands Crus),
Fixin, Marsannay and Vosne, where today Romanée-Conti wine
is produced. Bishop Virgil's will from 680 mentions properties
well-known today as “La Chainette” and the “Clos de Migraine”,
both near Auxerre. The Saint-Germain Abbey later owned vines near
what is today the famous Clos de Vougeot. But as well-known as some
of these wines are today, none appear to have had any reputation
beyond their own regions in this period.

A
large number of these records reference places along the Yonne or
elsewhere in Burgundy. This alone gives some idea of the region's
continuing importance. The first hint of its having a reputation –
continued or renewed – comes in the ninth century, with a mention
of
it
(“de
Burgundia m[odio] L”) in
Ansegisus' constitution for the Abbey of Fontanelle
(c. 823-833). (Ansegisus also mentions several other specific wines,
but these cannot currently be identified.)

A 696 charter of Ansebert is
especially interesting, because it mentions "Hauxiaco, in pago
Belnense"; that is Auxey, in the Beaune region. The wine of
Beaune is that most mentioned in France in later centuries, though it
may (by one account) then refer to Burgundy wines in general. Still, specific mention of a Beaune wine this early stands out.

Another
mention, in Wideradus' will of 721, is of Senseriacum
and
Ariacum, both in the Nivernois (today, roughly, the Nièvre).
Ariacum is Herry.
By
some interpretations, Senseriacumis
Sancerre. If so, this is an early mention of a wine-producing region
which
soon became important. But
at least one author believes it to be another town in the region, Sancergues, slightly to the south of Sancerre and much closer to Herry. (Both Sancergues and Herry, though obscure today, still produce wine.)UPDATE 3/31/2014 A charter cited in another collection, which dates it from 868 (typically given as December 27, 867) records the donation by Charles the Bald of a cella (storehouse) at Chablis, on the Serein river in the Tonnerre region, to the abbey of Saint-Martin de Tours, along with attendant properties, including vines. The wine's reputation would only come later, but of course the mention is of interest.

Numerous
vineyards continue to be referenced in the Moselle region, though not
all were in what is France today. Several were near Trier, now in
Germany. Abbess
Irmina d'Oeren mentions vineyards in Echternach (698) and Steinheim
(704), both in Luxembourg, which
has never stopped producing wine.

If
the vineyards of Alsace appear less, their presence is nonetheless
firmly established in this period. Documents from Weroald (in 700)
and Pepin (in 768) mention vineyards there.

Champagne wine
was also mentioned early on. Two versions exist of a will by St. Remy
(V-VIth c). In the one that
is generally accepted as genuine, he left several vineyards which
were probably in Champagne; one (at Vendresse) was certainly there,
another was at Laon (that is, in Picardy).
Centuries later, around 853, Pardulfe sent medical advice to Hincmar,
bishop of Rheims, and recommended several wines from the region,
including those from Sparnaco (Epernay), Mount “Ebon” (probably
Mount Bernon, looking over Epernay),
and Calmiciaco (Rouvroy in Chaumuzy).The ninth century polyptique for St. Remy also
lists a number of vineyards in areas around Reims. These may have
been red wines as well as white, however, and there is no reason to
believe they were sparkling. Vizetelly
writes:

A
conscientious writer candidly acknowledges that, despite minute and
painstaking researches, he cannot tell when what is now known
as sparkling Champagne first made its appearance. The most
ancient references to it of a positive character that he could
discover are contained in the poems of Grenan and Coffin, printed in
1711 and 1712; yet its invention certainly dates prior to that
epoch, and
earlier poets have also praised it. It seems most probable that the
tendency to effervescence already noted became even more marked in
the strong-bodied gray and'partridge-eye'
wines, first made from red grapes about 1670, than in the yellowish
wine previously produced, like that of Ay, from white grapes, and
recommended, from its deficiency in body, to be drunk off within the
year.

Still,
it is clear that by the ninth century the wines of Burgundy, Alsace
and Champagne were already known.

The
records from St. Remy also mention vineyards near Laon, as does one
from Childeric II in 671 and from the Abbot Huntbertus
in
the same year. Laon, utterly unknown for wine today, would remain a
wine-producing region into the nineteenth century. Though
its proximity to Reims may make this unsurprising, it
may be more surprising to know that all
of Picardy (now
known for beer and cider) was
once a wine-producing region.

Writing
in the eighteenth century, Le Grand d'Aussy says of the wines of
Picardy:

Master Le Moine, Archivist of Corbie,
published, three or four years ago, a notice where he claims that
Picardy once had vines. ...still now there are vines near Amiens on
the territory of Cagni; there are some near Montdidier, and in some
other areas of this Province. It is true that these vines yield an
awful wine, which is only consumed by the common folk; but still it
is wine. Among the vineyards of France Baccius (in 1596) counted
those of this same territory of Amiens, and of a large part of
Picardy. When, towards the middle of the VIIth century, Clothaire III
founded the Abbey of Corbie, he gave the Monks, by his title, lands,
woods, meadows, and the wines of this region. Finally, we have
another charter from the same Prince, by which he permits the Abbey
of St. Bertin, in Thérouanne, to make several exchanges; and where
he speaks again of wine.

In
fact, a number of documents from the Early Middle Ages reference
wines in Picardy and even in what is now known as the “north" (Nord)
department. For
a long time, wine production in these regions was perfectly standard, as was producing wine
around Paris.

A
558 donation from Childebert I mentions vineyards in Issy (Isciacus)
in the Paris region. Other records mention Argenteuil and Puteaux
which, like Issy, most Parisians today probably know only as stops on the
RER (the suburban rail system). But the reputation of wine from the
Paris region would endure long after the Middle Ages. Le Grand
d'Aussy cites praise of wines from the Paris region (those of
Argenteuil in particular) through the sixteenth century. It may well
be that simple proximity to a city which has a disproportionate
importance in France helped here. But Le Grand also sees in that one
reason for the local vineyards' decline: “Could it not be that the
owners, blinded by the lure of the sure and prompt sale which the
proximity of the Capital offered them, had the impudence to neglect
the care of their vines; to choose plants of an inferior quality but
greater yield; in a word, to prefer abundance to quality!”

Two
apocryphal documents from Dagobert I record vines in the Vienne, now
in the Poitou-Charentes region. This area today is best known for
cognac, but in 1281, Eleanor of Castile ordered wine from La
Rochelle, also in the Poitou-Charentes region, to be sent to England.
Wine from La Rochelle is also mentioned in the Bataille des Vins
(see below).

If
southern wines appear less in these records, this may reflect a
difference in the monasteries (which kept many of these records) as
well as the reality of cultivation. The
wines of Toulon are unknown today, but
in 739, Abbo, the Patrician
of Provence,
left a vineyard near Toulon in his will. The
area's wines endured well beyond the Middle Ages; as
late as the eighteenth century Samuel Johnson found them familiar
enough to propose
for a drinking match:

"I
wish," said he, "my master would say to me, Johnson,
if you will oblige me, you will call for a bottle of Toulon, and
then we will set to it, glass for glass, till it is done; and
after that, I will say, Thrale, if you will oblige me, you will call
for another bottle of Toulon, and then we will set to it, glass for
glass, till that is done: and by the time we should have drunk the
two bottles, we should be so happy, and such good friends, that we
should fly into each other's arms, and both together call for the
third!"

Several
donations from Sigismund of Burgundy in 523 concern the Valle d'Aosta
(the Aosta Valley), a region that is today part of Italy (known for
Fontina cheese and dishes made with it), but was long a part of
France and remains officially bilingual. One of the documents
mentions vineyards in Morgex, whose Blanc de Morgex is still produced
today. Fumin, another grape variety, is also from this region, which in general has the particularity of having preserved its original vine stock,
being too high to be affected by phylloxera.

In 615,
Bertechramnus, the Bishop of Mans, left land with vineyards at
Floriac, “between two seas”, that is, Entre-Deux-Mers, an area in
Bordeaux still known today for its wines. Otherwise, if Bordelaise
vineyards appear rarely in these records, it nonetheless remains true
that they were already again praised in the twelfth century, and so surely must have been revived at some point in this period. Whether
evidence of this lies in texts or archeological digs remains to be
seen.

Coming attractions...

These references show that
viticulture was thriving in the Early Middle Ages, even if the
infrastructure did not yet exist to create a coherent market and
corresponding appreciations of different wines. But by the ninth
century, Ansegisus' constitution and Pardulfe's letter both show that
certain wines were beginning to have at least local reputations.
Probably similar recommendations were made that have not survived in
documents. Certainly within a few centuries, wines of specific French
regions were not only known but exported to other countries.

The first really extensive
look at French wines comes under Philip-Auguste (reigned 1180 - 1223) with d'Andeli's
famous verse “the Battle of Wines”
(la
Bataille des vins)
in which different wines dispute their title as the best wines in
France. But
for so many wines to have established reputations at this point, some
at least must have been known in the centuries just before and one can reasonably speculate that at least part of the poem's remarks held true in earlier times. Le
Grand d'Aussy resumes the information in this colorful document as
follows:

Among the wines of the Provinces or of
regions, the Poet praises those of the Gâtinais, of Auxois, of
Anjou, and of Provence.

Regarding particular wines, known in
different Provinces, one sees that,

The Angoumois, had that of Angoulême.

The Aunis, that of La Rochelle.

Auvergne,
that of St. Pourçain (a).

a. Another of
our XIIIth century Poets, speaking of a man who became very rich,
says of him, to give us an idea of his luxury, that he no longer
drank anything but the wine of St. Pourçain.

The Berry, of Sancerre*, of Châteauroux,
of Issoudun, and of Buzançais.

[*Le Grand has “Santerre” here,
but that is in Picardy. The manuscript too says “Sancerre”]

Champagne, of Chabli [near,
and at one time part of, Champagne], Epernay, Rheims,
Hauvilliers, Sezanne, Tonnerre.

Guyenne, of Bordeaux, Saint-Emilion, Trie
and Moissac.

The Isle de France, of Argenteuil, Deuil,
Marly, Meulan, Soissons, Montmorenci, Pierrefite and St. Yon.

The poet adds that the wines of Argenteuil are as “clear as a
tear in the eye, and better than all others”.

The Languedoc, of Narbone, Béziers,
Montpeller, and Carcassonne.

The Nievernais, that of Névers, Vézelay.

The Orléanais, of Orleans, Orchese,
Jergeau, Samoy.

The Poitou, of Poitiers.

The Saintonge, of Saintes, Taillebourg,
St. Jean D'Angéli.

The Touraine, of Montrichart.

Le
Grand adds these more eloquent notes as well:

The Poet speaks with contempt of the
wines of Estampes, of Tours and of Mans. He accuses these last two of
tending to go sour in summer.

(Note that some of the most mentioned wines in
earlier centuries are from Mans, not least because a disproportionate
number of forgeries were produced in that region.)

By this period, too, the wine of Beaune – whether
from that region in particular or Burgundy in general – had already
established itself as the first in France, The poet, says Le Grand,
“shows us the wine of Beaune with a yellow color, leaning somewhat
towards that of ox horn. Such a color in a wine is rather difficult
to imagine.” In fact, the verse is closer to:

A wine which is not best too yellow;

More is it green than ox horn.

seeming to say that the wine was best when more
green than yellow. Which is, if anything, harder to imagine, but
together with the reference to Argenteuil wine as like a tear drop
shows that much of the preferred wine of this period was lighter in
color.

Le Grand goes on:

Whatever the case, the vineyard in
question was considered one of the first of the Realm. When the
Popes, in 1308, came to carry the Pontifical Seat into France, their
table, for almost the whole time they stayed in Avignon, the table of
their principal Officers, and that of the Cardinals themselves, was
always furnished with wine at the expense of the Monastery of Cluny.
This wine was probably wine of Beaune: because Petrarch writing in
1366 to Urbain V, to get him to return to Rome; and responding to the
different reasons which kept the Cardinals beyond the mountains
says, I have heard them claim sometimes that there is no
Beaune wine in Italy.

The wine of Beaune would retain its primacy
for centuries, even as the lists (which Le Grand provides at length)
for subsequent centuries would vary greatly. What would not change
from this period on was the rich variety and the renown of many
French wines; a renown which had been, as it were, gestating in what
are still too often called “the Dark Ages”.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

In 542, at the request of St. Sacerdos, Childebert I
founded a hospital at Lyons, the first in France, that was to not
only receive pilgrims, but help cure the sick (cura aegrotantium).
Unfortunately, no details have survived of its functioning, much less
its food. Which is regrettable, since whatever food was served there might fairly be considered the first hospital food in France.

The early idea of a
hôpital
went beyond receiving the ill. It was, in simplest terms, a place to
stay for those who, for whatever reason, had none: pilgrims,
traveling clerics, the poor, the sick. Typically such stays were
limited in time. Even as the concept evolved, the association between
the sick and the poor would remain close, not least because both
offered an opportunity for Christians to show their charity. Later
records often talk of povres malades, which could mean “the
poor sick” but more precisely meant the sick poor. And in practice,
those who could afford to receive care at home probably had good reason to avoid the crowded and less than hygienic conditions of
period hospitals. While evidence suggests that some people of means did end up there, in general these places were associated with the less fortunate.

In terms of food, what
this means is that often it is difficult in this period to distinguish between food
for the poor and the sick; in many cases, both probably received the
same ration.

Perhaps the earliest
glimpse at food given to the sick comes from the 822 rules for Corbie
recorded by Irminon. The Picard abbey's hospital received various
temporary visitors, including traveling monks, the poor and the sick.
For the most part then, the rations outlined would have been provided
to all. Hocquet has analyzed the figures in Irminon's document,
which are largely in bulk. He estimates that someone lodged at the
hospital regularly ate 5.25 pounds of maslin bread, drank 2 cups (.9
liter) of ale and shared a pensa of bacon or cheese,
alternately, a muid of vegetables (typically broad beans or
peas), sometimes some eel and fresh cheese on fast days, or mutton or
veal. There was also an occasional ration of pork. (Hocquet notes: "It is not without interest to note that veal, mutton or horsemeat is a food of the poor, despised by the provenders, whom as we will see ate a great deal of pork...")

This was probably more
than many normally ate in the period and certainly substantial, if
not particularly luxurious.

Monasteries continued to
house the poor and sick in some cases, but increasingly other
hospitals were established (widely, though not universally) for this
purpose. Typically these were called the House or Hostel of God: the
Hôtel
Dieu. (“House of
God” here is used in the sense of a place of Divine hospitality,
not in the sense of “God's residence” as
applied to a church.)

Paris' Hôtel Dieu, the
earliest and most important Paris hospital, still exists today and is
said to descend from Saint-Christopher's hospital, already documented
in 829, when a charter from bishop Inchad mentions it. The history of
a hospital on that location has been the subject of various dubious
conjectures, as for instance that it went back to the time of the
Druids or began as a place of refuge under the Merovingians. It may
also have been built near a convent then or later, a reasonable
hypothesis, since nuns often served in such establishments. It probably faced St. Christopher's tomb.

When the rue Notre Dame
was cut through existing buildings in 1184, leading up to what would
become Notre Dame Cathedral, St. Christopher's was at least partially
destroyed. For a while it is mentioned together with the Hôtel Dieu,
but after a time only the Domus Dei parisensis (House of God
of Paris) is mentioned. In 1097, St Christopher's was ceded to the
chapter that ran the Hôtel Dieu. It had still been, says Husson, more of a hospital in the general sense of a place of hospitality.
But subsequently food and/or drink for the sick, especially the
pregnant, was noted in various donations to the Hôtel Dieu.

In 1037 Thiphaine la Comine's will set that, on the day
of his death, a barrel of wine be given to the invalids lying in at
the Hôtel Dieu, "the best there may be" (melius quod
habebit). He also left ten pounds for the monks and nuns as well
as the sick to have a pittance [that is, a basic meal]. In 1199,
Adam, a canon of Noyon, left a donation giving the sick all the foods
they wanted and that could be procured on his birthday and, if
anything remained, on the following days. In 1244 Etienne Berout set
aside 30 pounds for the Hôtel Dieu for a pittance for women lying
in. King Jean II
(reigned 1350 - 1364) and his son Charles V (reigned 1364 - 1380)
granted all confiscated bread and rotisserie products to the
hospital. In
the early fifteenth century, grocers gave an annual gift of “fine
powder”, a mix of different spices. The drapers, on the days of their
meetings, sent a loaf of bread, wine and meat to each of the sick, as well as "an entire dish" to the pregnant (though Coyecque notes cautiously "we have... nowhere found that this custom was actually followed"). On
Easter, in the fourteenth century, the silversmiths organized a meal with two loaves
of bread for each resident, a pottage, two eggs, roast veal and wine (as well as
money).

(Note that “pottage” in French is potage, which today is synonymous with soupe, but could be a more substantial dish in earlier eras.)

Meanwhile other hospitals
were established around France.

In 1293 Marguerite of
Burgundy, Saint Louis' sister-in-law. established a hospital at
Tonnere (in Burgundy). The act founding it said that the poor would
be lodged in it "and the convalescents fed for seven days and
sent off with a shirt, coat and shoes; ... that the [twenty] brothers
and sisters... would be charged with giving food and drink to those
who were hungry or thirsty... to visit the sick... and must not take
their meals until after the sick have been served."

This last stipulation
often appears elsewhere as well. A rule for the Hôtel Dieu of
Pontoise from the thirteenth century says that meals of the invalids
must always precede those of the religious community and the poor
are to receive the foods they desire that correspond to the nature of
their illness and the community's resources. The same rule says that
“the poor must never drink but seated and holding their glass with
two hands”, a stipulation also found in Vernon and Lille.

Leon Le Grand, in a
lengthy study of Medieval hospital regimens, notes that many Medieval
hospital rules were derived from those of Saint-Jean of Jerusalem,
which

had as a principle to give the sick everything they asked
for, so long as one could procure it and it was not harmful to their
health.... Different accounts... show that this article did not
remain a dead letter. At Beauvais, for example, during the exercise
1379-1380, most of the finer dishes, such as mutton, fish, crayfish,
milk, apples, figs and grapes, tartlets, are noted as having been
bought for the sick. At Saint-Nicolas de Troyes, at the Hôtel Dieu
of Soissons, they were provided sugar, spices, figs, almonds. At
Saint-Julien de Cambrai, in 1361, one notes the purchase of beer, of
wine, of white bread, figs, apples, pears, walnuts, cherries and
medlars for the same purpose.... At the same hospital, five pittances
had been founded for the poor, one of wine and two of fresh water
fish. At Abbeville, 60 sous [were given]... to allow the
distribution, on the first and second of the Calends of each month,
to the sickest people the foods which would give them the most
pleasure.

In 1336, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the
community arranged to distribute the fruits of their vines to
"whichever people, pregnant women or sick of the said hospital,
want grapes."

Not everybody thought such indulgence
was appropriate. The preacher Jacques de Vitry (1160-1170 - 1240)
wrote:

Often hospital workers, with a charitable intention, go
too far; they go along the sickbeds, asking each and the other what
they want to drink and eat; in their ignorance and their simplicity,
the poor only consult their taste, ask for wine and meat, even if
they have a violent fever, and this too strong meat causes their
death... You no more have the right to give them foods contrary to
their health than you should leave a sword in the hands of a madman.

Vitry's concern was not unfounded;
consider this note on liberated concentration camps: “The
liberators' first response was to give the people food.
Unfortunately, many died soon after liberation because they ate foods
that were too rich for their weakened systems.” (Bartel)

Leon Le Grand also cites
the rule of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, in Paris, which mentions
poultry, lamb and kid from Easter to Saint Michael's, with pork from
young pigs after Saint Michael. “The reason escapes us for which
the meat of female animals was always banned, but one understands better
that of Lenten food eels, lentils, broad beans, cabbage were
excluded, considered too difficult to digest.”

In general, the Church's
rules on fasting were eased for the gravely ill. At Aubrac, they were
not applied to those in the hospital at all and Innocent VIII (pope
1484 - 1492) excused those in the Hôtel Dieu of Troyes “so that
the sick more easily recover their health.”

Le Grand also derives from the statutes
of the Hôtel Dieu of Angers an idea of how the sick were served:

At the appointed hour, a bell rang to alert the sisters:
at this call all were to go at once, without exception, to serve the
poor. Coats and caps were distributed to the sick so that they did
not get cold during the meal; then one proceeded to the ablution of
the hands; the sisters, a towel around their neck, passed before the
beds of the poor and presented the water to them, as was then the
custom for all people of distinction before the meal. The pittance,
prepared in the kitchen in a large iron pot or in frying pans, was
then brought into the hall; the sisters distributed bowls and wooden
or tin spoons to the sick, wooden goblets, shared out the food and
served it to them, cutting their bread and giving them the help they
needed."

Monks too might help with
this and of course prayer played a large part, with Holy Water being
brought in afterward. This was especially important in order to avoid any invalid who died doing so without the help of religion.

The
sick were not always well-behaved. In
1416, the abbey at Charité-sur-Loire
implemented
new rules, one of which tried to correct an awkward situation: "The
sick, who because of their small number were sometimes placed at a
single table where they often gave themselves over to pleasantries
which could be misinterpreted, would in the future be placed beside
the Prior's dais." (Audoin-Rouzeau),
Whether larger
groups of the sick behaved better in hospitals is uncertain, though
it probably helped that they were not typically seated together at a
table.

A variety of details survive from other
places. In 1327, at the hospital of Bracon (in the Jura), it was set
that

the sick lying within the hospital have daily three
dishes, that is at lunch a pottage and a plate of meat or fish, or
other depending on the day and circumstances, for dinner one such
dish as the mistress finds possible

Otherwise, the sick, the poor and women lying in should
have whatever it is possible to have, and in the morning before lunch
as breakfast should eat just as the mistress sees possible, all the
sick and women with child living in a way, both as to food and drink
as to other necessities, as the mistress of the said place allows.

In 1395 the “hotel for
the sick of Meullen” bought 1000 herring and 20 Paris sous of
mustard.

At Saint-Elizabeth de
Trèves, the daily fare
was plain bread (better on feast days), cabbage, peas, or other
seasonal vegetables. On Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, two pieces
of meat, on other days eggs, cheese; at Lent, herring.

At Saint-Jean-en-L'Estrée
in Arras about a hundred pigs were bought each year between 1313 and 1336;
between 1318 and 1324, from 33 to 78 sheep were bought in different years.
Somewhat less beef and poultry was bought. Beef was given
exceptionally to some invalids; poultry was given to pregnant women,
strangely, in Lent. Says Richard, the editor, “gruel, made of oat
flour, eggs, peas, and other vegetables, a great deal of milk, wine,
beer, verjuice complete this food, to which one could add 'flans' and
pastries on certain feast days.” He adds however that the accounts
are not very explicit on this point.

At Hesdin, in the same
region, pigs were also bought from 1324 to 1336. In the first year,
twenty-six were bought at different prices, some to eat "by
pieces in winter", seven to sell, three to eat between Easter
and Pentecost, six to make bacons, that is, flitches.

If indeed all this food
went to the sick, they were unusually well treated; the spices alone
would have been a great luxury. The Hesdin accounts also include,
under equipment, a “mortar to make sauces”, indicating unexpected
care in preparing the food. On the other hand, in 1333 the equipment
also included a barrel for making gruel, with a funnel and a bucket
and a “cauldron for carrying gruel to the sick”. It is not impossible (though not specified) that different ranks of visitor received different rations.

The same hospital had
gardens and a rural domain and maintained cows to provide milk for
the sick, as well some livestock. It also set out a donation box ("trunk") specifically to add to the pittance (et fist on chele semaine
pitanche as povres d'argent que on avoit pris u tronc del ospital.)

A series of accounts for
the Hôtel Dieu of Beauvais survive from the late fourteenth century. Items in the entries from 1379-80 include:

Other items include crayfish, mustard, almonds, chickens, cherries, new broad beans, and
oats. Still, if these were all for the hospital, it is not sure if
they were always intended for the sick. More explicit references
mention mutton, almonds, fish (on Fridays), mussels and crayfish for
the sick. Milk is mentioned as well, especially for children. For the
feast of Saint-Jean, some foods were reserved for the sick, including
sugar, "gruel" bread [?], cherries, apples, figs and grape,
butter, crayfish. Accounts for 1377 mention finer meats (veal or
mutton), chicken, milk, tartlets and sugar, figs and grapes, and
crayfish for the sick.

The community members
themselves of course fell sick. At Saint-Gervais de Soissons, between
1447 and 1482, foods are listed for several sick nuns, including
quite a bit of sugar and two mentions of claré,
a spiced wine like hypocras: “sugar, beverages and other
little things”; “mutton, fish, sugar, cherries and other things”;
“mutton, fish, cherries, sugar, claré
and other things”; “sugar, almonds, white bread and cherries”
and green ginger after the illness; “a chopine of claré',
sugar, figs, white bread”; and “sugar, almonds, white bread”.
Sugar still had some claim to be medicine at this point, but the
overall effect here to a modern reader is of treats (and not very
healthful treats at that).

A full humoral analysis
of all these foods would require a separate study, but fruit in
general was regarded with suspicion by doctors of the time, which
makes its frequent appearance all the more striking. Aldobrandino of
Siena (13th c.) however does write that cherries comfort
the stomach and that bitter almonds (though never actually specified in
these lists) are better than others for comforting the sick. Otherwise, it is striking that one sees so little soup, for instance.

Lallemand, in a work generally covering the tenth to the sixteenth century, lists various
allocations, without specifying the dates. At Gonesse, fresh meat on
Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday; bacon on Monday with eggs or cheese in
the evening; eggs, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; with this other
foods as available. At the hospital of Séclin
in Flanders, accounts mention fresh herring, salted salmon, mussels,
small pike, carp, pork, beef, veal, mutton. Eggs, cheese, peas,
garlic, spices, vinegar and verjuice were also purchased. At the
Hôtel Dieu of Angers, sardines, bleaks, cabatz grapes [from
Touraine], and a half-pound of almonds were bought for someone who
was "outrageously sick". (One wonders how they felt after eating sardines, grapes and almonds...)

At Metz, Larchey lists:

For each invalid daily three quarters of a loaf and 1
pint of wine "old measure". Item on Monday, Wednesday,
Friday and Saturday at dinner each a dish of pottage such as is made
in the kitchen of the [sceans ["seated"?
established?], that is peas, broad beans and cabbage, according to
what the day gives and with this further each a bowl of gruel, which
the converts make [sic] in their rooms and further at supper each a
dish of cheese bruye [brouet?] made as above.

Item on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, each of the said
days before the dinner a piece of grilled meat, or a soup of meat
when grilled meat is lacking, and they have at dinner each a piece of
meat and pottage such as the day provides, and at supper each a sirloin [? alouez/alloyau?] of meat with the pottage.

Item for Lent, each day at breakfast rye puree at dinner
peas and saffron puree and at supper a soup of oil and saffron and
each day a herring, and Sunday at supper and Monday at dinner a
pittance of fish.

(From context this seems to be fifteenth century, though Larchey says only that he took it from the cartulary for the hospital, for which he gives no date.)

Coyecque's
work on Paris'
Hôtel Dieu in the Middle Ages is probably the most cited work on
this subject. Here is his summary of food there:

Outside Lent, the invalids avoided meat one hundred and
forty days out of the year, that is three days a week, Wednesday,
Friday and Saturday; the one hundred and eighty five other days, they
ate meat. Mutton was the basis for all the meals; beef and cow meat
were served less frequently; as to veal, lamb or pork, these were
only eaten on certain feast days, ten times a year; let us add almond
pottage, eggs, salt and fresh water fish, figs, grapes, sugar, gruel,
Capendu apples, pears, cheese and tarts; further, each hall received,
weekly, three pints of milk. On fast days, eggs and dairy were
replaced by herring, barreled (gutted) or smoked, and by onions
preserved in walnut oil.

The “gravely ill” were better cared for: they were
given better wine than usual; poultry was reserved for them. They
were only fed on capons, goslings, poussins or pigeons. If meat
disgusted them or was contrary to them, they were given "stew to
breathe" [brouet à
humer, made with eggs, butter and verjuice] or
"meat cullises"; if they wanted a roast, the cook set his
spits in motion. On fish days, instead of cod or whiting, they were
served a dish of little fried fish."

He asks, rhetorically, “Was one well fed at the Hôtel Dieu?”

The bread, the wine, the meat, were they of good quality?
Nothing allows us to deny it; do not forget, besides, that in the
Middle Ages as today, the guests of the hospital, for the most part,
at least, knew privation by experience, the dry hard piece of bread
washed down with a gulp of water, if not complete fasting: an
excellent condition for not being difficult and for appreciating the
house's pittance...

For the quantity, it is different: each invalid had a
choir boy's ration. Was it enough? We would not dare to claim it;
some were not of this opinion and asked for a supplement – which
they got in return for solid cash.

But, he points out, not everyone could afford this.
Still there was always the chance of a rich bequest “for an
addition to the pittance”, or a sudden gift of sheep, as well as
the leftovers from the community's table.

His description of how this was served
differs slightly from that above at Angers:

Two meals a day... were held. When the invalids heard
sound, on the clock, the hour of dinner or supper, eleven or six
o'clock, rising up on their seats, they held their hands out towards
a small table where were found various utensils: an earthen pot where
the sister poured the wine ration, a half-setier by meal; a goblet
for drinking, a wooden bowl and a spoon, also in wood.

The
first official rules for the Hôtel Dieu of Paris are variously dated to between 1217 and 1363. The eighth article states that a sick person
must first confess and receive Communion before being admitted (note
that this would have excluded Jews, for instance). After the
personnel was to take him to his bed and treat
him like the master of the house;
then to give him every day what he wished to eat, before the brothers
were served.

Coyecque's
second volume includes some statutes from 1408 “for the Ostel-Dieu
and for the good of the poor.” This begins with the reasonable (if
perhaps optimistic) order
to keep the gravely ill in beds by themselves, without a companion.
The next item is a curious mix of French and Latin:

Item that those charged
with cooking the meat for the sick, have it properly prepared, so
that, when it is presented to the said invalids, eam
non abhorreant propter ejus nigredinem aut aliam causam propter quam
eciam sani non vellent commedere
[they do not shrink from it because of its blackness or other causes
such that even healthy they would not want to eat it]

The
need for such a stipulation leaves one wondering just how badly prepared the
meat might sometimes have been, especially given the limited means of
many of the invalids.

The
item after this points out that vineyards had
been dedicated in Suresnes, Gentilly, Vanve and “other good
territories near Paris” to the use of the poor and declares that at
least the gravely ill should be served wine from these rather than served wine from the Gastinois and Champagne “as has been done before, by
which several paupers, so it appears, have lost their lives.”

Aside
from the idea that Champagne was once considered fatal to the sick, a
modern reader might be equally
surprised to know that at
this point the wine of the
Paris region
was well-regarded, and
had been for centuries. The
intent here then was that the sick be given very good wine.

In
general, much of this fare sounds tasty even today and was probably
all the more so to people whose normal diet would typically have been
very limited. This is not to suggest that Medieval hospitals were in
any way luxurious; the sharing of beds alone would make them
unbearable to most of us today. But in terms of food, some might
consider crayfish, Brie cheese, almond pottage and tartlets, all
washed down with good wine, as tempting alternatives to modern
hospital fare.

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About Me

Jim Chevallier, author of this blog, is a contributor to the Dictionnaire Universel du Pain (Laffont, 2010), the second edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2012) and Consuming Culture:in the Long Nineteenth Century (Lexington, 2007) and photographed winemakers for The Wines of Chablis and the Yonne (Sotheby's, 1984). As owner of Chez Jim Books, he is also the author/editor of a number of self-published works on "niche" subjects as varied as the history of the baguette and the croissant and life inside the Bastille, as well as a number of excerpts from the classic food history by Pierre Jean-Baptiste Le Grand d'Aussy. He is currently working on histories of French bread and Early Medieval food.